Skip to main content
Dessert

Quince and Apple Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from pears, quince, and apples cooked with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Quince and Apple Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the pears for 45 minutes to 1 hour until soft.

  2. Remove the pears and pass them through a sieve to extract the juice.

  3. Combine the pear juice with an equal amount of quince juice in a pot.

  4. Add the apples and cook until soft, about 1 hour.

Thicken and set

  1. Stir constantly over low heat until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  2. Pour the mixture into shallow pans or dishes and let it cool.

  3. Cut into squares once set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Quince + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quince juice
Adds tart flavor and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Pears
Contribute body and smooth texture through their juice.
Apples
Add pectin and bulk, helping the mixture thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and helps it thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until thickened. Thickening depends on the sugar and fruit pectin concentrating as water evaporates. Stirring constantly over low heat prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give a burnt taste and dark color.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, apple, sugar):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, apple, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes